Safe
by Lord Valerius
Summary: Faced with the past he had once left behind, Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy doesn't hesitate to do what he thinks must be done, even if his squad and friends think otherwise. (ONE-SHOT).


He hated water. It was cold, wet and it got everywhere.

And back when he was a child roaming the streets of Earth there wasn't any. Even now as a Lieutenant Commander of the Alliance Navy he _still_ woke up sweating from nightmares of his times back in the Tenth Street Reds, the cruel bastards who thought denying children food and water would earn their loyalty, the cruel bastards who killed his little Natalia as a warning to him.

Well... he'd returned the favor and there hadn't been enough of the man who'd done it to fit into a matchbox, his singularity ensured that.

And now Natalia was about to be avenged, and making things even sweeter for him was that it was Natalia who was going to be doing the avenging, his beloved shotgun fitting perfectly in the gap between Finch's jaw and throat.

"Come on, Shepard," the leader of the Reds purred smugly, a smirk tugging at his lips as he relaxed against the wall like it was his idea to be thrown against it. "It'll only take a word before yer little past is all ov'r the big wide extranet".

Finger twitching on his shotgun's trigger, John pressed it in tighter and smirked back as the graying man gasped for air. "The fact ya think ya'd get a chance to even _speak_ that word is kinda funny," he growled back, hearing his voice slurring back into the accent he'd had back on Earth, back when he'd never even _heard_ the word 'school'.

"Hardly think a new shiny _Spectre_ wants to be seen as a killer," Finch countered, "Try 'splaining _that_ to a judge".

"I'ma shiny Spectre, I don't _do_ judges," he shot back, smirk growing as Finch paled.

"Commander!"

"It would be too easy, wouldn't it?" John continued, ignoring the person behind him. "Just turn the gun like this," he explained as he twisted the shotgun in his hand to find the right angle, "Ya wouldn't have a head left no more would ya? 'Course not, yer the one who taught the shiny Spectre how ta shoot in the first place weren't ya?"

" _Commander_!"

"I made ya, _'John'_ ," Finch rasped out, sneering as if that would stop John from noticing the tremors rolling through his body.

"And Frankenstein's Monster is gonna break ya," he snarled out, _Natalia_ 's muzzle pressing into the soft fleshy part of the gang boss' throat. It would be so easy, just a flick of his finger and the leader of the Tenth Street Reds would be _covered_ in the red he loved so much.

" _Shepard_!"

The hand slamming down on his shoulder pulling him back to the real world, John let himself be pulled away from Finch even though he ignored the order to lower his gun.

"Commander! Control yourself!" Alenko hissed in his ear as John glared at the smirking man.

"Who's yer little boyfriend, H?" Finch asked innocently, crossing his arms and pretending to yawn as a growl burst up from John's chest. "Does he know 'bout yer past? Did ya ev'r tell 'em?"

"John," Alenko whispered, voice cutting through the anger reddening his mind, "John don't do it".

Slowly – unnaturally so – John lowered the shotgun as Ale- as Kaidan pressed down on his arm.

"You're lucky the Lieutenant is a better person than I am," John ground out, words coming slowly as he struggled to speak them fully and correctly. "Or else you'd already be dead".

"He's got ya on a pretty little leash them?" Finch taunted, looking more confident now he knew John wasn't going to kill him, "Just like I did eh?"

Huh... and now _Natalia_ was in his face again.

"John, don't do it".

"Yer nothing but a little bitch ain't ya?" Finch continued, "A toy used to kill".

"I'm going to do it," John forced out, Kaidan's hand tightening on his arm.

"John, no," Kaidan insisted.

"Yer sister was nothing but a toy weren't she? I _loved_ playing with her till she broke".

His shotgun hitting the floor was the only sound in the deathly quiet of the alleyway, followed quickly by startled yelps as John moved. The loud _thuds_ of Kaidan and Garrus hitting the walls echoing in the back of his mind, John only saw red... and blue... as dark energy exploded out from around him, his fist drawing back as his biotics carried him forward and _into_ Finch.

"Alenko, I did the thing".

Not fighting Garrus as the turian pulled his stiff body away from Finch and into Kaidan's arms, John let out a dark growl as the former C-Sec bent down to pick up _Natalia_ , the turian freezing and looking to Kaidan behind him. The Lieutenant must have shaken his head as Garrus just backed away from the shotgun and made himself scarce, fiddling with something on his omnitool as Kaidan tightened his grip around John's unstruggling shoulders.

"John?"

"What now?" John asked, cutting Kaidan off as he turned his head to the side so he could watch the other biotic from the corner of his eye. "You gonna write me up?"

"What me? Write up a Spectre?" came Kaidan's forced casual reply, the man's hand moving up John's arm until he could feel a thumb pressing into the back of his neck, the simple touch pulling John back to the present and away from the screams echoing in his ears. "Do... do you want to talk about it?"

"Do you want to listen?"

"Of course I do Comma- of course I do John," Kaidan promised, gently leading him away from Finch's corpse. "Just... _shit_ John, he doesn't have a head left. I knew you were powerful but that warp's stronger than anything I've ever seen; I mean I know you killed a thresher maw with nothing but your biotics but _still_ ".

'M'not John," he mumbled, unable to muster the energy to remind Kaidan he'd been _just a little_ high on biotics-enhancing drugs when he'd charged the thresher maw.

As Kaidan turned back to him with a raised eyebrow, he swallowed and shifted on his feet, "My real name is 'Hansel'," he confessed softly, "I changed it when I joined the Alliance after they kil- after they killed Natalia".

"Your sister?"

"She was all I had," John... Hansel whispered as he reached out to gesture at his shotgun, the _Natalia_ floating up into the air caught in a pull field until it bumped into Kaidan's side, the Lieutenant glancing at him before catching it and holding it tenderly.

No... no he _was_ John. He'd been John ever since he killed the man – Ritz – who'd killed his sister before joining the Alliance. He still saw himself breaking free of the Tenth Street Reds gang in a blaze of blood-red and biotic-blue, shattering and disintegrating _anyone_ who stood in his way.

"When I lost her I went mad, tore apart the gang that owned me," he continued, knowing without looking that Kaidan was listening to him. "When the Alliance Peacekeepers found me I'd almost gotten them all, only Finch has escaped. The PK brought me in to the station and then the next thing I know there's this guy sitting in front of me chatting about the benefits of a biotic joining the Alliance. I signed on the dotted line and..."

"And you left that life behind," Kaidan finished for him as his throat closed up.

"So I thought," John agreed, "But seeing him there brought it all back".

Pausing for a moment, he glanced over at Kaidan before flinching at the look of understanding in the other man's eyes. "M'sorry," he apologized weakly, "I shouldn't have done it".

"Shouldn't have done what? Killed the gang leader that threatened and blackmailed a Spectre?" Kaidan dismissed with a snort. "You listened to me without judging me for Brain Camp, I killed that turian for breaking my kinda-girlfriend's arm, you had more reason that I".

Staring at Kaidan, the man he'd come to see as a brother in the short assignment they'd worked together before the _SSV_ _Normandy_ , John just smiled and reached an arm out. Kaidan stepped into it immediately, the two of them patting the other on the back in what he was assured was a 'proper' bro-hug.

"Just saying though, John," Kaidan began hesitantly, as they separated, "I don't think the Alliance would care if your past came out. You're the Hero of Elysium, the Butcher of Torfan; the fact that you were once a member of a gang and then changed your path to something this 'honorable' is something the Alliance is just going to eat up".

"I'd make a terrible role model, K," John snorted, looking over the biotic's shoulder to stare at Finch's headless body.

"Why? You're mine after all," Kaidan admitted, not looking at all ashamed of what he'd said, "And you've done a damn good job of it so far".

"That doesn't make me a good person".

"Commander John Shepard is one of the goodest people I've ever known," Kaidan argued softly, "I don't know this 'Hansel' bloke, but I think that he's a poor bastard that made the best of a shitty situation and made the right choice when he had another option".

"Goodest?"

"You don't need to graduate high school to join the Alliance when you're a biotic," the Lieutenant sniffed, "But then again at least I _went_ to school".

"Oh are you _really_ going to go there?" John drawled, head snapping around to raise an eyebrow at Kaidan, the dark-haired man's lip twitching into a smirk.

And just like that it was over, his Lieutenant and 2IC was breaking into a (frankly) girlish giggle and a weight lifted from John's shoulders that he hadn't even known he'd been carrying for all these years.

Natalia had been avenged, it had taken ten years but it had still happened. His baby sister could rest easy now, and he could finally turn his sights on a future that didn't include watching her die all over again every other night. Hell, he might even be able to start dating now without feeling like he was betraying her (and he _knows_ okay, knows that it doesn't make sense, but that didn't stop the nightmares from accusing him of forgetting her and moving on). But then again he didn't think the middle of a hunt for a rogue Spectre and his geth was a good time to set up a dating profile.

"You back now, Commander?" Kaidan asked, the man still breathless.

"Yeah," John confirmed as he glanced over at the red-faced biotic, "Yeah I think I am".

"Good. Because the LEOs are here and I'm not dealing with them again".

* * *

He should have expected it really. He _should_ have, but he didn't.

The files that Finch had promised to publish had been real, and they had been published. John had taken one look at the ' _Breaking News_ ' before stripping off to try drown himself in his private shower, refusing to allow himself to be taken back there again by that bastard of all people.

He felt brittle from the events of the day, but stronger for knowing that Finch was dead and it was all behind him now.

Or at least, it was _supposed_ to be all behind him now.

"John. Yo- You have curls".

Not even looking at Kaidan who was sitting on the edge of his bed, John just stomped over to his footlocker to pull out a fresh pair of Alliance Blues, slipping into them as the other biotic focused on watching the news on the large screen.

"Kaidan. People don't take me seriously with curls, hair gel is a must".

"This is pretty... well... gruesome," his Lieutenant confessed bluntly, "I thought you were terrifying now, but back then? Back then you were practically feral".

"Oh gee thanks," John spat sarcastically, "That makes me feel so much better".

"Suck it up, Commander," Kaidan shot back without hesitation, still not looking at John as he watched an older vid of the – well feral _was_ the best way to describe it – teenage boy with shaggy blonde hair tearing through a squad of around two dozen Tenth Street Reds in nothing but civvies and armed with naught but his fists, teeth and the biotics whirling around his malnourished body furiously.

"I remember that fight," John blurted, his body moving on its own to sit beside Kaidan, eyes locked to the screen as well. "They were trying to defend Ritz – the Red's second-in-command and my 'handler' – who was hiding out in the building behind them. I lost my patience and ended up throwing a-" he was cut off as he watched the younger him unleashing a shockwave straight through the ranks of the gang members and _through_ the old brick wall.

"You destroyed the entire building," Kaidan murmured in awe.

"It was an old building, made entirely of brick and wood, no protection against dark energy weaved into the metal," John defended softly, "It toppled over like a house of cards. It's what brought us to the attention of the Peacekeepers actually".

"Did Ritz survive?"

"Not for long," John said with a smirk, unable and unwilling to stop the surge of pleasure as he watched his younger self biotically pull Ritz from the collapsing building before warping his head clean off. "There's a reason I'm the Alliance's top ranking biotic, Kaidan, and that's _without_ being on Minagen X1".

"Did it get better?" Kaidan questioned slowly as the vid cut off and jumped back to a woman sitting on a couch.

John could only swallow, "No".

Sitting there stiffly as Kaidan stood, he watched as the man turned the sound back on. "Does _this_ make it better?"

" _And here we are with a surprising special guest who is more than willing to answer a few of our questions about Commander John Shepard,"_ the woman declared to an audience's applause, _"Captain Anderson, how do you feel as the Commander's previous superior officer knowing that this clearly unstable man was a member of your crew?"_

" _In a word? Safe,"_ David Anderson answered as John stood to retreat back into the bathroom, making him freeze. _"When I first met the Commander he was this tiny little thing sitting in an Alliance PK station back on Earth, he'd been abused, starved and owned by a gang and had nowhere else to turn. I gave him that somewhere else, I sat him down and offered him a place with the Alliance because I could see that he was more than an 'unstable man'. And I've watched his career with the Alliance since the moment he accepted my offer, and I've watched the man who you claim to be 'psychotic' as he's turned his life around and become the man he was meant to be"._

" _Shepard has walked through the darkness and came out the other side brighter than an angel, and with those curls how could he be anything but. The boy you just showed was_ not _Commander Shepard, that boy is dead"._

" _Actually, Captain, I think you'll find that that boy is now a Spectre and is allegedly hunting down another Spectre gone rogue,"_ the interviewer asked with a sneer.

" _Ms Al'Jilani, I wouldn't trust anyone else with the job"_.

* * *

 **SAFE**

* * *

 **So this is another of my sister's and my thirty-minute segment stories, although this one is just a one-shot about my favourite game.**

* * *

 **SAFE**


End file.
